End-to-end steel construction workflow with bocad at AST Anlagenbau
CUSTOMER
AST Anlagenbau und Engineering GmbH
PROJECT
CHALLENGES
AST Anlagenbau und Engineering GmbH uses bocad for steel detailing and fabrication preparation.
Company and Project Background
For more than 40 years, AST Anlagenbau und Engineering GmbH has delivered projects in piping, steel construction, and plant engineering — including turnkey solutions. The company serves a wide range of industries, including chemical, pharmaceutical, food processing, energy, and metal production.
One example project is a silo support structure weighing approximately 1,000 tons of steel, which was fully detailed and prepared for execution using bocad.
Challenge
In daily project operations, large volumes of data must be processed and delivered reliably under significant time and cost pressure. As the industry increasingly relies on open interfaces such as IFC, interoperability has become a key requirement for efficient communication and collaboration.
ADVANTAGES
Solution
Customer data can be imported into bocad via interfaces such as IFC and transformed into fabrication-ready steel models. Based on this data, material overviews, bills of materials, and NC data are generated for production.
The workshop drawings document the entire steel construction workflow. In addition to general arrangement views, they include numerous sections, node details, and connection details. Components are systematically structured and fully resolved, enabling direct downstream processing in fabrication and assembly.
“With bocad, I can prepare a ladder structure properly for fabrication. It is by far the most sophisticated system,” explains Patrick Bartetzko at AST Anlagenbau & Engineering GmbH, who has more than 20 years of experience working with bocad.
Results
Using bocad enables a stable and efficient project workflow in steel construction:
Reduced errors in detailing and execution
Consistent data foundation for fabrication and assembly
Clearly structured workshop documentation
Improved coordination between project stakeholders
Increased productivity
Efficiency Through Detailed Automation
A key efficiency driver is the automation of recurring tasks. With bocad 2026, additional features have been introduced to further increase automation in steel detailing workflows.
Functions such as component cloning — for example for end plates — simplify detailing work and save valuable time.
“Cloning in particular makes the work significantly easier,” says Bartetzko.
Special requirements such as coated components or bent plates are also supported, including differentiated treatment of interior and exterior surfaces.
Conclusion
“Compared to other systems, bocad clearly stands out for me in execution quality as well as in bills of materials and NC data,” says Patrick Bartetzko.
An end-to-end digital workflow in steel construction optimizes processes and increases efficiency from detailing through fabrication and project execution.